Life has really gotten in the way of my creativity the past several months. From my knee replacement in October to my sister-in-law's diagnosis of brain cancer and then her homegoing to our furbaby's death, it has been a real brain-drain. Here are a some of the things I made in between all of life's other adventures.
The beginning of December our amazing nephew married the love of his life. His mother asked me to help finish a stocking she designed for the wedding to hold the gift cards from those attending. She is so very creative and I was happy to help her with it. The sneakers in the toe represent how James proposed to Brittney.
This past Christmas we even got to baked some pfeffernuesse and a couple of other favorites. There were no cookies the year before because we only got our countertops installed on December 23. Here is a picture of some of the traditional family cookies.
For Christmas, I made some of Sonia Showalter's alphabet Christmas angels for family and friends. The turned out so pretty, I think.
Of course, I love to make free-standing lace angels to send to people, especially those who are undergoing some sort of trauma in their lives. After the shooting at Sandy Hook, Nathenia at The Country Needle (TCN) designed some angels especially for that cause. I also made bunches of angels to send to others as well. The designs for these angels were from TCN, C-Some Stitches, and Marie Osmond. I usually prefer using plain white thread, but I ventured out and used some colored thread for some of them, too. Here are several of both types.
In the midst of running back and forth to western Pennsylvania during Clara's battle with cancer, I also embroidered a couple more animal towels for my SIL Hannah. This time I embroidered the boys' names on the bands that held the towels. It was the first time I tried embroidering on ribbon and it turned out nicely, especially since they were the same kind of towel. I used an alphabet in my Embird software for the names.
Last week I also embroidered a vintage-style design from Sew Weird on a sheet set and blanket for a friend to give to her foster granddaughter for her birthday. It was a lot of work changing colors and trimming all of the jump stitches as they occurred, but I loved the end result. I was a bit impatient to take the pictures and didn't wait long enough for the water to evaporate from removing the water-soluble stabilizer, so some wet spots show up on the blanket. 8-)
Finally, we had to have our furbaby Dingo put to sleep last week. It was a heart-wrenching decision, but he had developed a growth on his colon and surgery would have been about $1,500, with no guarantee that he would survive or not have other tumors. He was miserable feeling like he had to go outside all the time. It was our last act of kindness we could do for him. He was ten years old on April 1, so we left him have as nice a birthday as he possibly could first.
A family at church also lost their beloved pup on Dingo's birthday and another friend had to have her old furbaby put to sleep last month, so I made doggy angels for them, since we were undergoing the same pain. These angels are also from TCN. The bear angels were just to have on hand for such a time as they may be needed to bring some cheer to a child.
Farewell old friend. Our household will never be the same again. You brought so much life and love into our lives.
Well, I think I'm pretty well caught up now. Hopefully I will be able to get on to some of of my UFOs and other projects in the near future.
